Investigation: Bakken Oil Waste Threatens Montana Farms And Local Water Supply

The 200 or so people who call Lindsay, Mont., home likely never imagined they would find themselves in the middle of an environmental battle fueled by radioactive waste. But that’s exactly what happened in the small community of farmers and ranchers in Eastern Montana after a local farmer opened a landfill and started collecting naturally occurring radioactive waste materials generated by the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota.

Known as Oaks Disposal Services landfill, the dump site is the creation of Ross Oakland and his wife, Tara. The duo are Montana-based farmers who have been growing wheat, peas and lentils on their farm in Lindsay since 1992.

In an interview with MintPress, Oakland said he got the idea to build a landfill on his property after an oil company began to drill on land adjacent to his farmland. Oakland, who worked as a driller in the 1980s after graduating from high school, noticed the oil company didn’t have a pit to dump the waste materials, so he asked a “company man” what was being done with the materials.

“Back when I was a driller, everything went into a pit on location and (we) just buried (the materials),” Oakland recalled. “Now they are environmentally friendly.”

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To ensure that the waste material doesn’t seep into the ground and, more importantly, the town’s water supply, Oakland said he created a “state-of-the-art facility” that includes two “top of the line” liners, an 18-inch layer of gravel, four monitoring walls around the perimeter of the landfill, a basal layer, as well as a leachate solution system. MintPress was unable to independently verify this.

Some of Oakland’s neighbors say they are concerned about the toxic materials being brought into their town from North Dakota. They claim that Oakland’s landfill is ruining the local land, air and water, and it’s only a matter of time before disaster strikes, which could result in a polluted water supply or health effects similar to those reported after prolonged exposure to radioactive and toxic waste materials in WWII-era Hiroshima.

Given that the landfill has already spilled or overflowed at least three times, Montana could be in the beginning stages of its own environmental and health disaster.

Investigation: Bakken Oil Waste Threatens Montana Farms And Local Water Supply